Paumanok
English[edit]
Etymology[edit]
From an Algonquian name for the area.[1] First recorded on May 3, 1639, in a deed between Lion Gardiner and "Yovawan, Sachem of Pommanocc".[2][3] Thereafter variously spelled Pamunke (1648), Pammanack (1656), Pawmanack (1658), Paumanuck and Paumanche (1659), and Pommanock (1665),[3] and later Paumanack and Pomonok (preserved as the name of a neighborhood in Flushing in Queens); and then popularized in the spelling Paumanok by Walt Whitman.[2][1] The precise origin of the name is not entirely clear,[1] but the source language has been suggested to be Lenape (Munsee),[4] and the first element has been suggested to be related to Massachusett pummunnum (“s/he gives away; offers, devotes”), paumpaummunum (“s/he offers it habitually or by custom”), and Narragansett pummenum- (“contribute”), with the final element probably a locative, making the name "land of tribute" (which had to pay tribute, or where wampum shells for paying tribute were obtained).[3][5]
Proper noun[edit]
Paumanok
References[edit]
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 William Bright, Native American Placenames of the United States (2004), page 373
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 Robert S. Grumet, Manhattan to Minisink: American Indian Place Names of Greater New York and Vicinity (2013, University of Oklahoma Press, →ISBN), page 227
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 "The Aboriginal terms for Long Island", The Archaeologist (1894), volume 2, page 175
- ^ Joan D. Berbrich, Three Voices from Paumanok (1969), page 192
- ^ Evan T. Pritchard, Native New Yorkers (2019), chapter 16